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Monday, October 24, 2016

21ST CENTURY THINKING: THE TRANSITION GENERATION

First published in 2006 by Eden Projects Books, James Martin's weighty work has gained added relevance in the intervening years. These are extracts from Chapter 1: The Transition Generation.

‘This could be either humanity’s last century or the century
that sets the world on a course towards a spectacular future.

‘Formidable problems confront us, but this is a book about solutions – many solutions. With these
solutions, we will bring about a change in course, a great 21st
century transition...A drastic change is needed in the first half of the 21st
century to set the stage for extraordinary events in the rest of the century.

‘This interconnected set of problems has an interconnected set
of solutions

‘In light of rapidly advancing technology...sustainability is
not enough. We need to be concerned with survivability.

‘Today’s young people will be the generation that brings about
this great transition...They are the Transition Generation. It is vital that
they – all of them – understand the 21C Transition, so that they can understand
the critical role they will play. For many, understanding the meaning of the 21st
century will give meaning to their own lives.

‘Solutions exist, or can exist, to most of the serious problems
of the 21st century. The bad news is that the most powerful people
today have little understanding of the solutions and little incentive to apply
them.

MOMENTUM TRENDS

‘There are about a hundred momentum trends that can help us
understand aspects of the future....Together, these high momentum trends form a
skeleton of the future

SURPRISES

‘To map the world in terms of trends having unstoppable momentum
suggests a substantial level of predictability, but even among prediction
trends, major surprises occur suddenly.’

‘A message that turns up repeatedly in this book is that we’d
better listen to the scientists.’

LEVERAGE FACTORS

‘I use the term leverage
factor to refer to relatively small and politically achievable
actions...that can have powerful results...here’s one dramatic example. When
women in poor countries are taught to read – a relatively easy and inexpensive
project – they tend to have fewer children.

‘We need to separate in our minds the momentum trends and
leverage factors from the overwhelming noise of smaller issues. By identifying
them we can think about how to make the future better. There is an enormous
amount that can be done to transform the journey ahead.

ECO-AFFLUENCE

‘There can be new lifestyles of the grandest quality that heal
rather than harm our global ecosystem... To avoid wreaking havoc around the
planet, we need eco-affluence to be globally fashionable.

‘The future will be characterised by raid growths in knowledge
and in new techniques for putting knowledge to work.

‘An important statement is that the world’s increase in wealth will be way much greater than its increase in
population.

‘Part of the 21C Transition is a change in civilisations –
different types of changes in different cultures.

‘What principles are
right for the 21st century, when so much will change?

‘Society needs visions of a better future. We need a broader
vision of the future’s diverse possibilities.

DICHOTOMY

‘The 21st century presents an extreme dichotomy. In
the stronger countries, it will be a time of great increase in wealth and a
massive increase in what humans can achieve. In the weaker countries...many are
actually destitute nations, or failed nations not developing nations...

‘We can ask: What is the
right thing to do? Or can we ask: What
is the most likely thing to happen?

[The right thing]: ‘there are clear fundamental answers. End
poverty. Eliminate disease and squalor. Educate children. Teach women to read.
In short, clear up the mess... This is not an impractical deal. It does not
need a large amount of financial aid; it needs basic know-how put into place
along with low-cost actions. The cost to the rich nations would barely be
noticed.

‘The most dangerous consequence of our activities may be that we
upset the way our planet regulates itself.

‘At present, this totally isolated blue planet is in a period of
natural warming. The Sun is slightly hotter than usual. It is bad luck that
this is the time when human civilisation is causing artificial warming.

‘New energy technologies that will lessen damage to the climate
are vital; technologies that facilitate the spread of weapons of ever more mass
destruction should be stopped if possible.

‘This is the first century since our caveman days in which Homo sapiens could be terminated. Even
if homo sapiens survive, civilisation
may not.

‘The main theme of this book is an idea that should be taught and
talked about everywhere: that the 21st century in unique in human
history in that it will produce a great change which will enable humanity to
survive.’

WHO IS JAMES MARTIN?

'Since 2005, Martin has
donated $150m to the University of Oxford to set up a school to study the
problems of the 21st century...He says that during his
extensive travelling he had seen remarkable changes in the world – not all for
the good. "I was getting more and more concerned about the problems of the
planet," he explains. He began to make a mental list of all the subjects
that needed in-depth study.

'The school now has 30
"institutes", composed of teams of about eight academics, each led by
a professor. The subject of each institute can be divided into four broad
categories: health and medicine, energy and environment, technology and society
and ethics and governance. A key feature of the school is the multidisciplinary
nature of its activities and each institute head is encouraged to find out
about what other institutes are doing in order to stimulate the
cross-fertilisation of ideas and techniques.... The overriding stipulation is
that their work should have direct, practical bearing on the problems facing
humanity in the 21st century.

'He
wanted to find the meaning of the 21st century, to discover what humanity needs
to do to pull it through the coming bottleneck of problems caused by the
"perfect storm" of population growth, climate change and shortages of
food, water and resources.

'He set about re-inventing
himself, writing a book that would become a manifesto for his philosophy. The
Meaning of the 21st Century: A Vital Blueprint for Ensuring Our Future was
published in 2006, a year after the initial launch of his school in Oxford. For
Martin, the 21st century represented the point in human history when all the
greatest problems will converge together, like a fast-flowing river flowing
through a constriction in a deep canyon. He believed that the world will need
to tap the intellectual resources of the best minds if we are to survive the
coming transition.'